On rare occasions, you may accidentally delete something from your Knowledge Base or lose content due to a hardware or software error, such as a power failure, a corrupted hard disk, an operating system error, or a bug in RemNote. To reduce the risk of permanently losing your notes, RemNote automatically takes backups in many cases and provides a way to restore them.
If you've lost some Rem but aren't sure if you need to restore a backup specifically, try the quick steps in Help! I deleted my Rems or they've gone missing! first.
Finding a backup to restore
Backups are generated automatically and can come from several sources.
Daily Backups
Our cloud servers automatically store a backup of your Synced Knowledge Base every day unless it has not changed since the previous day's backup. All Daily Backups are retained for at least 60 days, unless you delete your RemNote account. (Backups older than this will likely be available as well, but only some of them will be retained and the details of which ones are retained may change from time to time.)
You can download a Daily Backup by going to Settings > Backups and then selecting the date of the backup you want.
Local Backups
If you are using the desktop app, you will have local backups available for your knowledge bases on your computer. Again, these are taken once a day unless you don't start the desktop app that day. Both Synced and Local Knowledge Bases generate local backups.
Local backups are stored on your computer's hard drive, in the backups subfolder of a folder which you can find at the Local Storage Location displayed in your Knowledge Base's settings (click on the name of your KB under the “Knowledge Base” heading in settings to get here).
Alternatively, you can open your KB's local folder from the KB that's currently open in your app by going to Settings > Troubleshooting > Locate .db file.
Manual Backups
If you've manually backed up your knowledge base recently (see Making a manual backup, further down), you can also restore from that backup.
Restoring a backup
Once you've found a backup, you'll want to restore it. The procedure will differ somewhat depending on what you've lost.
If you've lost or completely destroyed an entire Knowledge Base
If there's nothing left in your Knowledge Base that you want to keep:
If you still have any Rems in the Knowledge Base, choose Settings > Profile > Account Deletion > Delete All Rems to clean everything up.
Choose Settings > Import > RemNote or click here while logged into RemNote.
Choose the RemNote tile.
Click Browse for file and select the backup file you want to restore (if you're not sure how to find your backup, see the previous section, Finding a backup to restore).
Click Open.
If you want to recover specific Rems from a backup
If your Knowledge Base is mostly fine, but you've accidentally deleted or lost some specific Rems that you weren't able to restore from the Trash, then you can import a complete backup into a new Local Knowledge Base and retrieve the specific Rems that you need to restore from it.
Note: Be careful to not import the complete backup into your main Knowledge Base by accident. This can't be undone (except by restoring another backup from scratch), and it can create a huge mess. In particular, if you've slightly changed some Rems between now and when the backup was taken, then a lot of near-duplicate Rem will be created on your main KB.
Download and install the desktop version of RemNote if you don't already have it.
From the user drop-down in the upper-left corner, select Add New Knowledge Base.
Give your new KB a name, choose “Local Only” for the type, and choose a folder on your hard drive to place this temporary KB in.
Click Create Knowledge Base.
Choose Settings > Import or click here while logged into RemNote.
Choose the RemNote tile.
Click Select File and select the backup file you want to restore (if you're not sure how to find one, see the previous section, Finding a backup to restore).
Click Open.
Explore your knowledge base to find the Rems that you need.
Transfer the appropriate Rems into your knowledge base using one of the following methods:
Copy and pasting. This is particularly easy, but may lose some amount of data on occasion (for example, flashcard review history).
Export the documents you want to transfer to the RemNote (Complete) type. To do this, choose Export from the document menu, the "..." (3-dot) button in the upper-right corner of the document, and then import the resulting files into your main KB.
When you're done with the temporary knowledge base, clean up by choosing Settings > Knowledge Base > "name of temporary KB" > Delete Knowledge Base, then follow the instructions shown on the app.
If you're not sure what backup to restore
Sometimes you might not be sure when you lost your data, so you may need to check several backups to find a version that contains what you've lost and is still reasonably up to date.
Pick a backup to check first and follow the instructions in the If you want to recover specific Rems from a backup section, stopping at step 9 (after you have imported a backup).
Remove all Rems from the temporary KB by choosing Settings > Profile > Account Deletion > Delete All Rems
Repeat steps 5–9 above using different backup files until you find the appropriate backup, then continue to steps 10–11.
Making a backup manually
If you went to transfer the data in a Local Knowledge Base to a different computer or if you're feeling particularly paranoid, you can export your entire KB in the RemNote format by choosing Settings > Export. Then select the Knowledge Base you want to backup, set the Format to Full RemNote (Complete), and click the Export button.
This backup includes everything in your KB except for your RemNote settings, your Knowledge Base's name, and your themes and plugin's installations and settings.
The backup can later be restored using any of the methods described above in Restoring a backup.